Leaving a peanut so that someone might break the shell to the nut inside.

Who is God?

"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." [Romans 12:2]

Imprecise Images

To be made in the image of God means we have some degree of God’s attributes. Most important of these is the consciousness of God and the heavy responsibility that comes with the extraordinary freedom of choosing our actions. But in the hierarchy of choices, there is the primary choice of aligning our thoughts, intentions, and actions with our best understanding of God. The literalists and fundamentalists exclude themselves from some of the deeper levels of meaning conveyed by the scriptures. The Bible, the Koran, and the Eastern books of wisdom are filled with sketches of God that at times seem clouded with ambiguity and even contradiction. Who is this God who commands severe punishment of sin by execution and dismemberment, or who declares war on women and children by genocide? Why, a rational person asks, is that found in the Good Book?

Stories of
that kind, such as found in Genesis, are steeped in the culture in which they
were written. They are a sketch of God
as the people of the time understood God.
Frankly, the early monotheists used God to their purpose, even as
moderns do, to conduct righteous wars.
Does this make God less than God?
Do humans have the power to make God in their own image?

The Bible is an
exploration into God engaged with humankind in its struggle to be in right
relationship with one another, the environment, and their Creator. Seen in that way, the light will shine
differently from different verses, but the light is there for those who “have
eyes to see.”

The Dangers of Dogmatism

So, if there
is a tragedy to the stance taken by the biblical literalists, it is that they
close off not only a richer and deeper understanding of God for themselves, but
for others as well, who are repelled by trite, absolutist answers that do not
resolve the complex questions raised. God
may work with tribes and nations, but he speaks to individuals. That individual communication is what we find
revealed through the prophets, warriors, historians, and poets who wrote the
Book. It is therefore also a continuing
communication of God with each of us as we read the wisdom writers, historians,
and prophets.

We’re called
to pray deeply, to think deeply, and to share deeply, the experience of God. We are called to be tolerant and open to
individual differences of how God is experienced through scripture, without
crying heresy or abomination. Yes, there
is evil misinterpretation and conscious conflation, but that can be identified
and rejected. Most people searching for
a healthy and functional way to living in this painful and confusing world are
searching in good faith.

The
implication is that we study in private, but we share in dialogue what we
genuinely experience, without fear of condemnation. It is the spirit of truth that should guide
us, in balance with a spirit of humility that the full truth is beyond our human
grasp. But what mental power we have, we
are to use. We can know much more than
we do. We can probe deeper into the meaning
of those confusing and anachronistic events of past cultures crying out for
God.

Practice Meditation with These Scriptures.

Today, January
29, 2019, these were the scriptures taken from Sarah Young’s wonderful devotional,
“Jesus Calling.” They are the inspiration
for this present mediation:

You made him a little
lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. —PSALM 8:5

Then God said, “Let us
make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the
sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over
all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. —GENESIS
1:26–27

We demolish arguments
and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we
take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. —2 CORINTHIANS 10:5

You will guard him and
keep him in perfect and constant peace whose mind [both its inclination and its
character] is stayed on You, because he commits himself to You, leans on You,
and hopes confidently in You. —ISAIAH 26:3 AMP

Roscoe Expertly Removing the Shell

Rewards Come To Those Hungry for What’s Within

Listen and See: The Divine Symphony

"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence . . . "
- George Eliot, Middlemarch